Every group has presented their Preliminary Design Review! They all have an idea about their respective design and a plan to move forward. Next week will see Critical Design Review for most groups, while the Frame+Mobility subgroup starts to cut and assemble the frame.

The team has been effected by late starts and early school closings in the week of Jan 13. We have been meeting at Nova Labs when possible but it’s not as productive as having shop access.

The frame and mobility team, aka BAMF, gave their PDR presentation. The other groups are close to prepared for their presentations and are working as fast as the weather allows.

Try again nature – we’re meeting at Nova Labs — 6p tonight Jan 14 — and there’s nothing you can do to stop us from building this year’s robot!

P.S. Please don’t smite us with a hurricane-blizzard-tornado-quake. At least, wait till after build season, thanks.

Firstly, there is the possibility of snow over the weekend. Look for an email from Kelsey about meeting update before you leave on Saturday.

The team spent the week in brainstorming solutions to play the game, and learned a lot from doing it. Now we meet in subgroups to plan for PDR and solve the specific challenges.

There are a few different ideas floating around for each manipulator system. Some parts arrived yesterday and we were able to test suction on the cargo, and if it will seal. There was enough vacuum to shatter the make-shift suction cup!

About 30 students, parents, and mentors came to the high school to watch the kickoff presentation on Saturday! We had a great potluck spread for breakfast and enthusiasm for the new game. We were excited to see the game, Destination: Deep Space — everyone immediately started brainstorming ideas and preparing for Stubots the next day.

Stay tuned for more updates as we iterate ideas and prototype solutions!

The Cornerstones organization has provided educational services to homeless and underprivileged youth in the Northern Virginia area.

Team116 teamed up with LEGO outreach to bring STEM and team-building to these kids in our community. We helped kids build and design monsters, hotels, and introduced them to the concept of team building and working with a creative process. Our team had a lot of fun hanging out with the Cornerstones staff and we hope that we can partner with them again in the future.

Our team members were hands on with the kids to help them build several structures. We helped them with their preliminary designs and worked with their creative ideas.

In some cases, the kids would work in teams before integrating their structures. Working carefully, they would combine their ideas and builds, similar to robot subsystems, to finish a completed structure that could stand on it’s own.

We would like to wish everyone in the northern Virginia area happy holidays – we were very thankful to be able to spend some time with the underprivileged kids in our community.

As the preseason winds down, the team will be organizing our annual Parent’s Night and Kickoff meetings.

Parent’s Night will be the first of the final two events before our season It’s an essential part of our ongoing effort to bridge the communication and information gap that exists between members of our team and their guardians. Bring your parents so that they can learn about FIRST, your pre-season build competition, and other important aspects of our team. Parent’s Night will be next Thursday, Dec 8,from 7 – 9.

Our annual Kickoff event will be the conclusion of the pre-season, and will take place on January 7th. Every year, FIRST releases the game of the upcoming season in a special video that is live streamed to teams across the world.  We’ll be having donuts, coffee, and bagels with our team to celebrate the beginning of the new season. We hope to see you all at both events!

Team 116 was fortunate to attend the 2016 Air and Scare event at the Udvar-Hazy National Air and Space Museum this weekend.

The team presented and talked about the culture and meaning of FIRST to kids, parents and the curious people that found themselves in our stand.

We showed off and drove one of our competition robots around, had a station to talk about FIRST  while playing with Hexbugs, hosted our own arena for kids to play with many custom-built Square Bots, and brought them closer to competition-ready drive testing by giving them the chance to drive one of our smaller beta robots.

Our stand showcased some of the awards our team was fortunate enough to win throughout the years.

Here is a picture of Superman trying his hand with our beta robot.

We had a chance to talk to many interested kids and parents — many were excited to learn more. The team used the opportunity to collect email addresses of interested parents and teens who wanted to learn more. We collected nearly 50 emails and helped spread the word about the interest  and purpose of FIRST Robotics.

As the pre-season is well underway, our team has begun to participate in outreach and off-season opportunities that will develop the team and prepare them for the challenges ahead. We’ll be attending both IROC and Air & Scare this year.

IROC:  (Ilite Robotics Off-Season Challenge) is an off-season recreation of the FIRST Stronghold game, hosted at Battlefield High School. Teams across our district will be attending and will take advantage of the opportunities of practicing build-season protocols and procedures at the event. It’s a great way to keep new team members interested and let them gain an understanding of what it is like to participate in the heat of competition. We last participated in this competition 3 years ago, where we placed as a finalist.

Air & Scare: Air and Scare is an event hosted at the National Air and Space museum of Udvar-Hazy, which our team has used as a platform in the last 10~ years to promote the meaning of FIRST to parents and children. Hundreds of kids and their parents stream into the museum to participate in the wide-ranging activities – our team uses our station to talk about FRC, FTC, and the purpose of FIRST.

Our entire team is really excited to be participating in both events this year – we hope to see you there!

All student members, new and old, need to sign up for shop training.  Sign up here. 

When you go to your shop training session, remember to bring a pair of shop goggles and the Emergency Care Form (here and also In the Resources tab under “Links”).